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Low Tech Joins the Fight Against High-Tech Theft

IT is the high-tech computer thieves who get nearly all the attention: the hackers, cyberpunks and industrial spies who delight in slipping past firewalls and penetrating seemingly impenetrable systems for fun and profit.

But another type of miscreant is wreaking havoc in the computer world: the burglar. As laptops become smaller and lighter, they also become easier to pinch. Desktop models are not immune: they are stolen from businesses and schools. Even courthouses have been hit.

This low-tech crime has led to a low-tech solution: locking up computers. Computer security companies now sell cables, clamps and other locks for desktop and laptop computers. Think of them as bicycle locks, or maybe the Club, for computers.

''It's funny, but it works,'' said Wendi Goldberg, president of American Data Mart, a midtown Manhattan company whose motto is ''Securitywear for Hardware.''

In a 1998 survey of 458 corporations, government agencies and universities, 65 percent reported laptops stolen within the last year. Laptop theft was the third most common electronic skulduggery, behind viruses (84 percent) and unauthorized employee use of computers and software (78 percent), according to the survey by the Computer Security Institute in San Francisco.

Safeware, a Columbus, Ohio, company that insures computers, reported 309,000 claims for stolen laptops in 1997, a 17 percent increase over 1996. About 100,000 desktops were reported stolen in 1997, it said. The total cost was $1.3 billion.

Operating on the assumption that criminals will steal anything not bolted down, many companies now bolt down computers. An industry has arisen to sell cable-and-padlock devices to tether laptops, and more complicated systems to fasten bigger desktop models to desks. There are even clamps that block access to CD-ROM drives.

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A pioneer in computer locks was Secure-It. William P. Brady, its president, said the idea struck him in 1983 when he was selling computers. ''Some people would come in and say, 'Is there any way to secure these things?' '' he recalled. ''There was nothing on the market at the time. So we began inventing these gizmos.''

Some companies offer high-tech solutions: Computrace sells a product that directs a modem to dial in periodically to a central computer and give its whereabouts. But companies that sell locks say the simplicity of clamps, cables and even glue appeals to many people.

Of course, no device is foolproof. As a skilled car or bike thief can overcome a sturdy lock, so can a determined computer thief probably find a way to beat a computer lock.

But manufacturers say the locks work well as deterrents. Experts say many computer thefts are crimes of opportunity, often inside jobs. Ms. Goldberg said she had heard of computers being mailed home from company mailrooms, whisked out in recycling bins or gutted for chips and modems by computer chop-shop suppliers. August, she said, is big for larceny; many who steal laptops or buy stolen computers want them for their college-bound children.

Often the cost of theft goes well beyond the price of hardware. Just over a year ago, when a computer filled with compressed information on credit-card accounts was stolen from a Visa International data processing center in San Mateo, Calif., the company had to take great pains to make sure that no card holders were put at risk. Many cards were reissued as a precaution.

''People always forget about the data,'' Ms. Goldberg said. ''An executive might not care much about the cost of a stolen laptop, but if it has his personal credit history on it, that's a different story.''